Tom Stewart, who says he was abused as a Boy Scout, holds his uniform outside the Boy Scout Camp Kilworth in Washington.

Photo: Ted S. Warren, Associated Press

Tom Stewart, who says he was abused as a Boy Scout, holds his...

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Kelly Clark, an attorney in Portland, Ore., examines some of the 14,500 pages of previously confidential abuse files.

Photo: Greg Wahl-Stephens, Associated Press

Kelly Clark, an attorney in Portland, Ore., examines some of the...

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John Buckland says he was molested in Fairfield in 1984.

Photo: Courtesy Of John Buckland

John Buckland says he was molested in Fairfield in 1984.

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This family photo provided by Tom Stewart shows him, right, and his younger brother Matt, left, in their scout uniforms. The brothers settled out-of-court after suing the Boy Scouts in 2003 for abuse they had suffered at the hands of one of their Scoutmasters. The Stewarts are angry that the Boy Scouts of America have fought to keep confidential thousands of files the organization has kept since the early 1900s on suspected pedophiles within their ranks. The Stewarts say releasing the files decades ago would have helped stop pedophiles. (AP Photo/Courtesy Tom Stewart)

Photo: Associated Press

This family photo provided by Tom Stewart shows him, right, and his...

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FILE - In this April 13, 2010 file photo, Kerry Lewis, left, leans into his lawyer, Paul Mones, in a Portland, Ore., courtroom after a jury found the Boy Scouts of America negligent for repeated sexual abuse by an assistant Scoutmaster in the 1980s. Local Boy Scout leaders and town officials helped hush up numerous child sex abuse allegations against scoutmasters and other volunteers, according to details in a trove of nearly 15,000 pages of so-called "perversion files" compiled by the Scouts from 1959 to the mid-1980s. Portland attorney Kelly Clark released the files Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/The Oregonian, Jamie Francis) MAGS OUT; TV OUT; LOCAL TV OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT; THE MERCURY OUT; WILLAMETTE WEEK OUT; PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP OUT

Photo: Jamie Francis, Associated Press

FILE - In this April 13, 2010 file photo, Kerry Lewis, left, leans...

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Portland attorney Paul Mones, right, with Kelly Clark, talks about some of the 14,500 pages of previously confidential documents created by the Boy Scouts of America concerning child sexual abuse within the organization, at a press conference to release the documents in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012. The files are a window on a much larger collection of documents the Boy Scouts of America began collecting soon after their founding in 1910. The files, kept at Boy Scout headquarters in Texas, consist of memos from local and national Scout executives, handwritten letters from victims and their parents and newspaper clippings about legal cases.

Photo: Greg Wahl-Stephens

Portland attorney Paul Mones, right, with Kelly Clark, talks about...

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In a Tuesday, Oct., 16, 2012 photo, Portland attorney Kelly Clark examines some of the 14,500 pages of previously confidential documents created by the Boy Scouts of America concerning child sexual abuse within the organization, in preparation for releasing the documents Thursday, Oct. 18, as he stands in his office in Portland, Ore. The Boy Scouts of America fought to keep those files confidential.

Photo: Greg Wahl-Stephens

In a Tuesday, Oct., 16, 2012 photo, Portland attorney Kelly Clark...

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Attorney Peter Janci sets court case displays upon boxes full of records from the Boy Scouts of America in Portland, Ore., Thursday, June 14, 2012. The Oregon Supreme Court has approved the release of 20,000 pages of so-called perversion files compiled by the Boy Scouts of America on suspected child molesters within the organization for more than 20 years, giving the public its first chance to review the records.

Photo: Don Ryan, .

Attorney Peter Janci sets court case displays upon boxes full of...

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Attorneys Kelly Clark, left, and Paul Mones, sit among the files that the Boy Scouts of America have maintained on pedophiles who try to gain entry to Scouting for immoral purposes, August 31, 2010, at the law firm of O'Donnell Clark and Crew, in Portland, Oregon.

(10-19) 08:36 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- More than a thousand Boy Scout leaders around the nation who served between 1965 and 1985 had allegedly molested boys, with at least two dozen of those attacks happening in the Bay Area, according to a mountain of documents released Thursday by court order in Oregon.

In most cases the leaders were tossed out of the organization, but more than a third of the reported molestations were never relayed to law enforcement, according to attorneys who fought to make public the records as well as the Boy Scouts of America.

Many alleged abusers were able to stay in the Scouts - and abuse more boys, in some cases - because they denied the charges, the records show. And further demonstrating how the organization struggled with the problem, others were ejected and then returned to Scouting elsewhere because local officials didn't know they had been declared ineligible.

The 14,500 released pages are from confidential files kept at Scout headquarters in Texas from the 1920s to the present. They are a blacklist of sorts, compiled by local and national leaders to document incidents or accusations of inappropriate sexual behavior and to bar abusers from further participation in Scouting.

The category of offense was labeled "perversion" in the Scout files, and the men in them were dubbed "ineligible volunteers."

The documents list 1,247 men who served in various volunteer roles, including scoutmaster, and who came from all walks of life, from mechanics to engineers to soldiers. Many of the cases involved suspected or confirmed molestations of multiple boys.

Bay Area cases

In the Bay Area, the documented incidents ranged from a scoutmaster in Sunnyvale coming on to a boy during a camping trip to an assistant scoutmaster in Fairfield molesting 13 boys during visits to his home or the troop's meeting place.

"Today is a very important day, a good day," said John Buckland, who was one of the 13 boys abused in Fairfield. "For nearly 30 years they had me and tons of us locked away in a little box somewhere with dust on the lid, but today with the release of all these papers we get to have our say."

Buckland, now 42 and living in West Virginia, was 14 in 1984 when he belonged to a troop at Travis Air Force Base. His case came to light when Air Force authorities came to his home one night and showed his parents lewd photos of him and the 12 other victims that had been taken by their abuser.

The assistant scoutmaster, then-Sgt. Curtis Knarich, 24 at the time, was court-martialed for the molestations and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. But Buckland said he still hurts knowing the Boy Scouts never contacted him to apologize.

"Don't get me wrong - Scouting itself is a great concept," he said. "But if you're going to have a great concept, you have to have great protections in place.

"The Scouts are all about honesty, trustworthiness and doing the right thing. And if they're really serious about that, they should be talking to all of us about what they can do to make this right and apologize to each of us."

Statement from Scouts

Boy Scouts of America President Wayne Perry issued a statement Thursday admitting his organization fumbled cases, adding that "we extend our deepest apologies to victims and their families." But he also pointed out that the organization has added many safeguards in the past couple of decades to prevent further incidents.

"There have been instances where people misused their positions in Scouting to abuse children, and in certain cases, our response to these incidents and our efforts to protect youth were plainly insufficient, inappropriate, or wrong," he said.

But he added that "today Scouting is a leader among youth-serving organizations in preventing child abuse. The BSA requires background checks; administers comprehensive training programs for volunteers, staff, youth and parents; and mandates reporting of even suspected abuse."

His office also cited a study it commissioned by a University of Virginia psychiatrist concluding that the incidence of abuse by Scout leaders was "very low." During the period covered by the released files, about 5 million boys and adults were involved in Scouting each year.

The documents were released by order of the Oregon Supreme Court, which ruled they should be made public after they were shown to a jury in 2010 during a successful molestation lawsuit against the Scouts by a man who was abused by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s.

"The big takeaway on this is that if sexual abuse can occur on this level in the largest youth organization in the United States, it has to make us aware that it could occur anywhere," Paul Mones, an attorney in the case, told The Chronicle.

The system of identifying abusers and ejecting them "was good," Mones said, "but the trouble was they didn't take this vast body of knowledge and do more with it. Silence is the worst thing in child abuse."

Mones added that the newly revealed information bolsters his long-stated contention that California's statute of limitations should be changed. State law says molestations from the dates listed in the documents had to be reported by the mid-1990s to qualify for most criminal and civil court action.

Window on the Scouts

In their raw, often redacted form, Thursday's documents give an unprecedented window into the way the Boy Scouts used information it received about alleged pedophiles.

In one notorious case, Richard Stenger of Menlo Park, a leader in the Sea Scouts, resigned after he was accused of abusing boys in 1971. Police reported finding bondage gear at his house, and he was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of minors.

But he was allowed to return to the Scouts four years later, after supporters in the organization - whose names are redacted - wrote letters of support. "I feel quite confident that no further problems will arise," one commodore wrote.

In 1989, Stenger was charged with strapping a preteen boy to a bed in a Scout boat, allegedly so he could derive pleasure from watching him struggle.

A 1971 file recounts how a 30-year-old volunteer was accused of making sexual advances toward boys in his Palo Alto troop at a Scout camp in Lakeshore (Fresno County). He was booted after the boys reported the incident.

According to a letter penned by the camp director, several scouts reported to an assistant scoutmaster that the volunteer had repeatedly put his hand on their genitals. The volunteer was interviewed and denied any wrongdoing during "horseplay," the letter said, but offered to "leave camp quickly and quietly." The camp director said the man was "advised to seek counseling," but there's no indication the police were called.

In a 1973 case, a 25-year-old executive trainee working for the scouts in San Mateo was convicted of committing lewd acts on a child under 14, forcing him to register as a sex offender. The national office placed his name in its confidential file - but also asked local leaders if they "feel this man should be rehired or allowed to serve in a volunteer capacity."

Name not checked

A 1966 file shows that Scout leaders in the East Bay disclosed that they had allowed a Richmond man to serve as an assistant cubmaster for a few months without realizing he had been convicted three years earlier of oral copulation with a boy.

The man was dismissed, the records show, but was able to return to a Cub Scout pack in Richmond within the next two years, because - as a "returning Scouter" - his name was not checked against the "confidential file" of suspected molesters.

In another case in 1982, two boys in a Daly City troop accused their scoutmaster of fondling them and showing them a pornographic movie. Confronted, the man admitted to showing the movie but denied molesting the boys. The allegations led to a review by the organization, but there is no indication that police were notified.

Records show the Scouts initially put the man on probation, with officials citing his long service with the organization and his "exemplary conduct" in the past. He was terminated in 1988, though the records do not explain the delay.